City Lights Are Makeshift Stars
by Okai
Summary: They escaped the wild, entering a new chaos.


Jinx's birthname is Jen in this story!

...

"Do you remember when you met me?" asks the older girl, looking up at the constellations before them. The Big Dipper was scooping up a handful of the night sky, and she marveled at the clarity this evening.

"No," replies Jen. She's looking up, too, but she doesn't find that much wonder in the sky.

"You were 14, and it was just about to be my birthday. I was 15." She remembers this like it was yesterday. "You had just been kicked out of the house. You already had your stick and poke."

Jen is silent, soaking in the older girl's voice, cherishing each word and letting them sink into her ears. "Why is this so vivid to you?" she asks, a shapely eyebrow raising at the older girl's picture perfect memory. "It's been, like, a year."

But she only shrugs in response, and her story continues. "We were criminals in the city at that time, and when we slept on the streets, we'd always look up but we'd never see the stars because the buildings rose too high."

Jen put the puzzle pieces together. "And now that we can see the stars..."

"We escaped that fucking town. We made it."

The bluenette smiled at the girl beside her without looking her way. They're on the patio of Ekko's house, and she's got a cigarette burning slowly on the end table beside her. The duo has stayed here for two months now, and they've got temporary jobs and they've been making ends meet. He's fine with their presence so long as they pay the fee, and they always do.

Jen is wearing a loose v-neck and has her signature dual braids cascading down her spine. She wears white jean shorts and she's barefooted, her new ankle tattoo peacefully residing on her reddened skin.

She's never looked so beautiful, the pink haired girl realizes. She's got big eyes, bigger and rounder than hers, with fire in each iris and lightning in her pupils. Her cheeks, glowing pink from the cool air, leave her breathless. She's got small lips, not too full but they're just the right size, and she notices that she had probably painted them with a thin layer of colorless lipgloss. They're shinier than the stars.

But her hair was what really amazed the older girl; she didn't have any trouble believing that those endless waves of tresses might contain every goddamn shade of blue imaginable. Darks and lights, saturated, highlighted and just so colorful, like a sea of everything blue.

She doesn't know what she's thinking when she gently grasps the younger girl's chin in her hands and makes those blazing eyes look into her own.

The younger girl is taken aback, but she's not afraid. They're never afraid anymore. And when naked lips press themselves against glossed ones, they're still unafraid. The world sings, and it's a choir of angels and demons, but even a private kiss under blankets of moonlight fails to stop the earth from spinning.

...

She walks in, old blackened boots clinking against the metal ground with every step. She has her police hat on this time, and her badge rests peacefully on her breast, because she wants - no, she needs - to remind herself who's boss here.

But she can't seem to stay on track when those devilish lips curve upwards as she approaches the interrogation room, and this time, a see through wall doesn't separate them. She can't keep focus, she can't talk about the case when this woman before her continuously mocks and ridicules her every word. And so she stops trying. She stops fighting.

"Why do you wear your hair like that?" is the only thing she can manage to ask.

This is the second time Vi has tried to talk to her old partner in crime, and still, those searing eyes stare straight into her own. It's terrifying, and she jolts around in her seat.

"It's like a fuck you," says the incarcerated girl, two braids dancing with each subtle turn of her head, those neck muscles flexing as she looks over her shoulder, staring at a wall. "You can't catch me. You can never catch me. Even with long dangly braid ropes growin' off my scalp, you'll never catch me."

"I caught you."

"Only 'cause I let you, fat hands," and there's that little raise of her voice, the change in volume at the end of her sentence, and the pinkette knows, from years of experience, that Jinx is lying.

"We need to talk about the case, Jinx-"

"Have I told you how many times-"

"Stop interrupting me."

The criminal is silent, not a peep. She doesn't even seem like she's breathing, and the only sign of life from the bluenette is the rise and fall of the small side bang on the right side of her face. It bobs with every breath, mesmerizing. "Okay."

She's so shocked that she realizes her words are gone. They sit in silence, the shifting sounds of clanging chains and keys whistling through the air vent.

"I think you missed it," says the pink haired girl with a solemn tone.

"Missed what?" she asks genuinely in response.

"The rush. The chase of being alive like that again. Maybe you missed us. That feeling of being with others," Vi explains promptly. "'Missed it.'"

"I don't miss being left behind," she says simply, but the words shoot daggers through the police woman's aching chest.

"You know we had no choice, Jen, it was either yo-"

"My name isn't Jen."

"Jinx, it was either you or..."

"Or what?" and she notices that the smaller girl's hands have begun balling into fists and then releasing repeatedly, as though she were struggling to grasp onto reality. She was clutching air. "Or your pretty little life with hat lady and Piltover and the money and everything else you left me behind for?"

"No. No, I didn't leave you behind, I just

"You left me...!" she screams and knocks the chair from under her onto the floor, and the sound of her shriek is so nerve wracking, she has to cover her ears, the back of the earrings digging into her skin. "You left me to die out there. No money or clothes or shelter or anything, just a fucking gun and a note. Is that all I'm worth?" Her legs are shaking, struggling to hold her full weight as she stands tall above Vi's sitting figure. Only the metal table separates them.

"I'm so fucking sorry, Jinx."

"It's your fault I'm like this," she begins, her head staring down at the ground, arms shaking with weakness but also strength, words seething with cowardice but also power. "This explosion-crazed chaos machine. I love the shock and the fear and the fun of blowing the world to shreds because...

because I can't find that same adrenaline rush I always got from you."

Jinx's eyebrows level out and you can see the anger dissipating from her eyes. "God damnit, Vi," she says under her breath, and you almost wouldn't be able to hear it. But she does, and she also hears Jinx plop down into her chair with an exasperated sigh as Vi closes the door behind her.


End file.
